Notebook | "Catch" star catches Seafair

One of the biggest celebrities at Seafair was captain Sig Hansen, star of the reality television show "The Deadliest Catch" on the Discovery Channel.

Hansen grew up in Seattle, graduating from Shorewood High in 1984. His show has been nominated for four Emmy awards, and Hansen has agreed to have the cameras aboard his crab boat that fishes in the dangerous Bering Sea for one more season.

"Years ago we used to bring the crab boat out here to hang out," Hansen said. "I'm 41 and I've been to Seafair every year except when I was in Alaska."

Hansen chuckled when asked whether his job as captain of the "Northwestern" was more dangerous than the drivers of the unlimited hydroplanes.

"Let me put it this way," Hansen said. "I wouldn't want their jobs."

Hansen is still surprised by the celebrity he has gained from the TV show and admitted it wasn't easy for him to make his way through the pits at Seafair.

"I get recognized more and more, and it's really kind of hard to deal with," Hansen said. "It's flattering, but it's hard when you get stopped all the time. It's really bizarre when someone goes 'Hey, Sig' and I don't even know them."

Hansen said filming will begin again in October, and the shows will air beginning in April. He has a ready answer when asked to explain the show's immense popularity.

"We're real," Hansen said. "We're there to fish and do our jobs, not to impress anybody. We just don't care."

U-9 Bertram just

misses a miracle

Driver Chris Bertram was back in the boat one day after suffering a spectacular blowover Saturday.

Bertram and the U-9 Tri Arc Electric sat out the second and third heats while working feverishly to get the boat ready for the provisional heat. They tried to start four times, made it away from the docks, but the boat went dead in the water.

"The boat won't run properly without a rear engine cowling," Bertram said. "That was the one spare part we didn't have. It started to get up on plane and then died off. It was like a car that's nearly out of gas."

Bertram, a petroleum salesman in Tacoma, said he leaves Seattle with even more confidence.

"For me as a driver, I raced at a second Seafair with a competitive boat," Bertram said. "We had an accident, we were able to put it back together and the crowd still loved us."

Flip-and-win

anniversary

Sunday marked the 10th anniversary of the "flip and win" by driver Mark Evans in what was then known as the Texaco Cup at Seafair.

Evans flipped in heat 2A and then came back to win the final in the PICO American Dream. Evans beat Mark Tate in the Close Call and Steve David in the Pennzoil Pit Stop in the final.

Evans was traveling at approximately 155 mph when his boat hit the wake of the Miss Budweiser and did a slow-motion rollover. Evans, 50, crawled out of the escape hatch, helped the crew fix the boat and then drove to the title.

Evans is now in the process of starting a school for drivers in Lake Chelan and has transformed the hull that flipped and won into a four-seat hydroplane that gives rides.

"Mark would have been here this weekend," wife Elaine Evans said, "but he probably would have hijacked one of these hydros to take it out for a ride. Mark has a 'never say die' attitude, and he'll stop driving when he stops breathing."

Frustrating day

for Renton driver

There was good and bad news for driver and author David Williams.

Williams and the U-48 Lakeridge Paving was all set for heat 2A, but when Williams pushed the start button nothing happened.

"It's so frustrating to put in so much work to get ready for this and be right there and not be able to go," Williams said. "It's unbelievable. It was an electrical problem, and it's been fixed."

Williams said the book "Turbine Racing in Seattle" was a hot seller in the park throughout the race.

"The book is selling really, really well," Williams said. "It's the one bright spot of my weekend."

Hopp, King

forced to retire

Driver Greg Hopp had a spot in the final nearly locked up when he felt a severe vibration in heat 3A and had to back off.

"It's probably a cracked prop," Hopp said. "We'd have to take too much stuff out to fix it. It's really frustrating. We didn't come here to sit on the beach, we came here to win the race."

Hopp said his boat will be ready to run in San Diego.

The U-3 Miss Hoss Mortgage Investors II, driven by Jimmy King, pulled out of the provisional heat when it suffered a deep crack in its hull in Heat 3B.

"It was pretty rough, typical Seattle, and it took a couple of whacks it didn't really like," King said of the fleet's only remaining piston-powered boat. "If we go out and run it, we may or may not come back with a sponson. We'll get ready for San Diego.

"We had a rough weekend, but we've been running decent and just ran into some bad luck."